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United Group: At the beginning of 2022 the completion of the acquisition of Wind

Of Costa Ketsietzis

Within the first quarter of 2022, the management of United Group expects that the acquisition of Wind will be completed, if there are no delays in obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals.

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition (DG Comp) is set to consider the acquisition on 21 December, and if there are no interventions from legal entities that could cause delays, the decision is expected shortly after the change of year.

Then the way will be opened for the completion of the transaction, which according to market information reaches a value of about 1 billion euros and will be followed by the merger of Nova-Wind that will create the second largest “player” in the fixed telephony market. and the third largest in the mobile market by a small margin from Vodafone.

United Group sees significant potential synergies in the Wind-Nova scheme that could allow the sale of mobile contracts to Nova customers, but also lead to the expansion of the subscription base on Pay TV. It also sees significant margins for reducing the operating costs of the new company due to the economies of scale that will be created.

Preparations are underway

These synergies are expected to be fully implemented one and a half years after the completion of the Wind acquisition agreement. However, in anticipation of the regulatory decisions, both Wind and Nova are making preparations for the merger.

Wind is moving away from the fixed telecommunications infrastructure sector through the establishment of Hellenic Open Fiber, which will provide exclusively wholesale-only, open-access services to telecommunications providers.

Market sources estimate that this move is part of the general plan of United Group for the creation of separate companies that will manage the infrastructure department with the possibility of providing services to other telecommunications companies or not.

Besides, United Group chose our country as the headquarters of the company it founded last spring for coordination of all wholesale activities of the group.

In the meantime, the strengthening of Nova is progressing. In the previous period, changes were made in the human resources with the departure of employees in the old Forthnet but also the placement of new senior and top executives.

The staffing of the company, however, proceeds gradually and with great care, as they note in Capital.gr sources of the market any moves are made with the reasoning of the merger of Nova with Wind in the coming months.

The results of nine months

In the first nine months of 2021, however, Nova as a member of the United Group recorded revenues of 182 million euros, while the adjusted operating profit after leases (EBITDAal) amounted to 52 million euros. The company’s investments during the same period amounted to 67 million euros.

On the other hand, Wind in the third quarter of the year had total revenues from services of 141.7 million euros, increased by 7.4% compared to the same period in 2020, while the adjusted EBITDAaL was 40, 7 million euros with a margin of 28.7%.

The company increased by 6.8% of mobile customers with a contract and by 2.5% of fixed customers with a contract in the third quarter. Wind’s corporate customers increased by 5.2% to 84,000 and new generation network (NGA) customers increased by 38.9% to 286,000.

The total investments of the last 12 months (From 30/9/2020 to 30/9/2021) amounted to 91.5 million euros.

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– Barrage of new digital investments

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Source From: Capital

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